


The Rest of the Dream

by RunningInHeels (TheXWoman)



Series: Safe and Sound [2]
Category: Under The Dome (TV), Under the Dome - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Children, Cute Kids, F/M, Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Light Angst, Married Characters, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 20:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16626344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheXWoman/pseuds/RunningInHeels
Summary: “Julia. It’s just a town, okay? Hell, it’s been nearly a decade. There’re businesses everywhere. There’s a whole bus line clear down to Castle Rock that gets you to the mall. Why is this such an issue?”“Because this isn’t about Chester’s Mill. This is about, after everything, the fact that Dawn is still your daughter and you’re never going to let that go.”





	The Rest of the Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clockwork](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Getting To Know You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574729) by [Clockwork](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork). 



The room was boiling hot when Julia jerked awake. She could feel sweat dripping down the inside of her thighs, her thin nightshirt damp, trapped beneath her overheated body and the wet blanket beneath her. Sometime in the night she had shifted onto her back and the weight made it difficult to breathe, so she dramatically kicked the blankets from her legs and let the more temperate room air drift across her bare skin.

Next to her, a small figure let out a snore. This is how it had been the last few months; the minute Julia started to show, Suzanne would appear in the doorway of their bedroom every night at 2 am, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she stumbled towards the bed and nested herself in between her parents. 

They hadn’t gone through this with Dana. She had been a mellow baby, a sound sleeper from the start. Their first night home from the hospital, Julia startled awake in the morning, seeking out the clock on the side table and feeling her stomach roll when the time blinked 9 am. There hadn’t been a peep from the baby since Barbie fed her at midnight, and she thought of all the horror stories about newborns suffocating or suddenly dying and then there was the fear—worse, in Julia’s case, the fear that plagued her constantly through her pregnancy as they journeyed from Seattle to San Francisco to the snowy reaches of the Rocky Mountains—that Dawn had found them, had found _her_ , had taken her half-sister away.

Rushing into her room, Julia nearly collapsed by the crib where Dana lay, wide awake and gurgling, her tiny fingers extended towards the turning mobile over her bed that Barbie made only weeks after they found out Julia was pregnant. When Barbie came in to check on her a few minutes later, he asked her why she was crying.

After that, she slept every night on the couch for two weeks, Dana’s head tucked under her chin until her dreams faded from near-drowned children and bright fires and gunshots echoing through the woods to the gentle smell of baby powder and toothless giggles and comforting warmth. When she finally put Dana to bed, Julia slept through the night, too.

“She’s the most well-behaved child I’ve ever heard of,” Barbie had said, his feet propped up on the coffee table (She’d asked him a thousand times not to do that, but these days she picked her battles a little better.). “The next one will be too. What can I say, Julia? We make perfect babies.”

Suzanne entered the world howling like a demon, like she already knew she should be afraid.

Julia could hear Dana snoring like a freight train down the hallway, the door swung wide open as Suzanne had left it when she crawled into the protected space between her parents. She shifted gently. “Mama?”

“Shh, go back to sleep, baby.” 

Suzanne complied, her heavy lids closing as she stuck her thumb in her mouth. Julia loved her with all her heart but, dear Lord, she hoped the next one was a little more independent.

The bed shifted, and Julia redirected her gaze in the darkness, catching the form of Barbie rising from the other side. She sat up, too, with a great deal of difficulty, her hands bracing the bed at either side of her hips.

“Barbie.”

He turned around, and even in the darkness, he looked a little sheepish.

“It’s fine, Julia. Go back to bed.”

“What are you doing?”

He moved carefully in the dark. The window had been left open in an attempt to force in some of the cooler outside air into the stagnate body heat built up in the bedroom. The horizon already glowed with the promise of a new day.

“I’m getting dressed. My flight is in two hours.”

“What?” Julia spoke a little too loudly and Suzanne stirred again. Julia pushed herself from the bed and toddled towards the door, beckoning for Barbie to follow her, which he did, if grudgingly.

Once the door to the bedrooms were closed, Julia headed to the living room. Barbie already managed to put on pants, but Julia had long given up on appropriate clothes. She refused to buy pajamas she would never wear again and settled on Barbie’s shirts for the first few months. Now her stubbornness relegated her to a comedically oversized T-shirt with a colorfully bloated logo for some radio station in Augusta. They had given it to her during the whirlwind press tour that was life after the Dome. Lies, lies, and more lies. She didn’t know why she kept it. Maybe as a reminder that they had their freedom; maybe as a reminder of what they did to get it.

Maybe both.

“We talked about this.” She kept her voice low so not to wake the kids. The one inside of her had ears now, and though Julia wasn’t sure what she could hear, she didn’t want it to be the raised voices of her parents. “You told me you weren’t going.”

“That’s what you gleaned from our conversation?”

“What I _gleaned_ was that we agreed our family is the priority here. Not flying back and forth to Chester’s Mill every six months to go on a camping expedition to find alien eggs you and I _both_ know aren’t there.”

Barbie glanced away, his features twisting into an admonished look as he blatantly surveyed the room to find anything to look at that wasn’t his wife. 

“You know why we have to do this. Why I have to do this. I’m trying to protect our family.”

“And how are you doing that? By missing Suzanne’s first dance recital on Saturday? By making Dana cry when you promised her that you’d come to her soccer game and then didn’t show up?”

“Hey, I apologized for that.”

“Apologies don’t make you appear in pictures your children will have forever, Barbie.”

She huffed and turned away, stomping towards the kitchen and pulling down a mug and some instant coffee. It was decaf, of course, which meant Julia refused to buy anything decent because, she argued, it all tasted like shit now, anyway. She wondered if Barbie saw her stubborn rejection of coffee and maternity pajamas as anything more than a hormonal tantrum, and if he did, he kept his mouth shut (He had also learned to pick his battles.). 

It wasn’t a tantrum, though. It was a calculated method with which she could set boundaries about how she intended her life to be, and she wouldn’t bend for the temporary. She wouldn’t be pregnant forever. They weren’t under the Dome forever. And no way in hell was Barbie going to spend forever going back and forth to that God-awful New England shithole, baiting Dawn to crawl out from beneath whatever fetid dump of waste she had spent the last eight years buried in.

Okay, so maybe it was partially the hormones.

Barbie followed her, releasing an ever-suffering sigh as he rounded the kitchen counter and rested a hand on her hip. “Come on, babe.” She stiffened under his touch but turned around, rolling her head to angle the hair out of her face. He rested his hands on her stomach, his fingers stretched wide and still nowhere near encompassing it. She had about a month to go and after two pregnancies, Julia felt like enough was enough.

“What if she follows you?”

“She won’t follow me.”

“What if the baby comes while you’re there?”

He sighed, obviously irritated, but resigned to the game. “One? You could have set a clock by Dana and Suzie. And two, if you went into labor I’ll be back before anything happens. I promise.”

Julia knew he couldn’t promise anything, it’s just the odds were stacked in his favor.

“Then what if I just ask you to not go?”

He pulled away, shaking his head as he braced his hands against the countertop and leaned up against it. Julia could tell he was mad, but that was Barbie’s way. She had a short fuse and a ten-mile kill radius. His anger was a bitter tea that steeped too long, lukewarm when he finally drank it.

“Julia. It’s just a town, okay? Hell, it’s been nearly a decade. There’re businesses everywhere. There’s a whole bus line clear down to Castle Rock that gets you to the mall. Why is this such an issue?”

“Because this isn’t about Chester’s Mill. This is about, after everything, the fact that Dawn is still your daughter and you’re never going to let that go.”

Silence fell over them abruptly. The sunrise was starting to peek through the lace blinds that Barbie hung over the kitchen window. Julia could hear Dana snoring through her half-open door; she had a doctor’s appointment Wednesday to find out why she snores so badly. It was the loudest she ever was, when she slept. During the day she preferred the silence, distracted by books, dinosaur toys, quiet whispers in the corner while her dolls agreed to drink tea or go shopping and gossip about one another’s hair.

In an hour, Julia would rouse Suzie to try to get her into the bathroom; potty training had been an eternal struggle with that one. There will be crying and fighting, refusal to eat anything but Lucky Charms for breakfast, and at least three meltdowns before noon. By then, she’ll be exhausted and in better spirits after a nap.

And in a month, one more new addition, one more unexpected personality that would grow and bloom under the roof of the home Julia fought to build for her family. The family that didn’t exist when she kidnapped and tortured Barbie, when she killed Carolyn, when she fought with fire and anger and determination (and love) because Julia wasn’t going to die under a dome at the hands of an alien invasion, no. Not when she had finally seen the potential of a life that she never before dreamed could be her own.

“Julia,” Barbie pushed himself off the counter and came closer to her, cupping her face in his hands and finally meeting her eye. “Julia, you are my life. The girls are my life. Dawn is…” He drifted away, grasping for a word that didn’t exist in the English language. There was no word for what Dawn is, not to Barbie.

“I understand,” Julia said, and Barbie stared at her skeptically. “I mean that. I didn’t then, but after the girls, I get it. No matter what she is, or what she’s done, she’ll always be your daughter and there will always be a part of you that wishes things turned out differently. But we’re not talking about a troubled kid that needs therapy and support, Barbie. We’re talking about an alien queen who wants to overtake humanity. She’s never going to _just_ be your daughter. And as long as you keep chasing her, the more you’ll miss out on the daughters who do want you.”

Barbie opened his mouth to respond and then closed it, his gaze passing over Julia’s shoulder and towards the living room. She sighed and turned, completely unsurprised to see Dana and Suzanne standing at the end of the hallway. Suzanne clung to the sleeve of Dana’s dinosaur pajamas, her own pink, frilly Little Mermaid sleep dress crumpled up in her other fist.

“Suzie said you were fighting,” Dana yawned, pushing the mass of red curls she inherited from her mother out of her eyes. Suzanne dropped the hem of her nightgown and stuck her thumb in her mouth, her bright blue eyes surveying the situation with haunting acuity.

“It’s okay, honey.” Barbie dropped his hands from Julia’s face and moved around her, towards and hallway. “We’re just talking about that I have to go away for a few days.”

Dana’s eyes widened, and Suzanne burst into tears.

“Daddy, the dance recital is tomorrow.” Dana stared up at him with a narrow gaze, her nose screwed up in frustration. “You promised.”

Suzanne wailed and when Barbie reached out to comfort her, she shook him away. “No, I want Mama!”

Julia’s back was already aching by the time she reached Suzanne, scooping her up and holding her close, letting her tear-stained face and strawberry blonde ringlets find solace in the warmth of her neck.

The sun had barely begun to properly filter through the windows before all hell broke loose in the Barbara household, Suzanne wailing into her mother’s neck, Dana dressing down her father with expert, even words. Once Julia managed to settle both the girls back into their bedroom with cartoons and breakfast, Barbie had long missed his flight. He sat on the couch nursing a cup of coffee when Julia came back in and she settled herself next to him. He set the coffee on the side table and draped his arm around her and she caught his hand, weaving their fingers together.

“Do you ever think about before, back when we first met?” he asked.

“Back when we were stuck under a Dome and couldn’t bathe on a regular basis?”

“And yet I couldn’t keep my hands off of you.”

“Well, some things never change,” Julia said with a smile, leaning her head against his shoulder as she caressed his fingertips with her own. Barbie rested his cheek on her head. “Are you going to reschedule your flight?”

Barbie was silent for a long moment. Finally, he pulled his arm from behind her and angled to look at her, and she rested her head on the back of the couch and stared at him.

“I think I’ve been trying to find a way to resolve it,” he admitted, his gaze soft even as she wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “It all ended so quickly. The Dome came down, then the military got us. We never had the chance to say goodbye, to anyone in town, to Joe…” Julia could see pain flash through his eyes and she sat up taller, completely quiet. “Now all of it’s gone. The town’s been rebuilt, Dawn is still out there and even the people who lost their family have learned to move on. History has been rewritten and no one but us will ever know what really happened. It’s like someone started a story and never got around to the ending.”

“Barbie,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his cheek with her hand. “A resolution isn’t the same as an end. We both know this isn’t over. Maybe not in our lifetime and maybe even not in our girls’. But if they ever have to fight like we did, they have to have something to fight for, like we did. We survived so we could have each other, so we could have this.” She gestured to the cozy living room, the sunlight streaming through the curtains. “Dreams are for the future, Barbie. Not the past.”

Barbie finally smiled, pinching a lock of her hair between his fingers before he tilted his head down to press his lips to hers. She kissed him back tenderly, her heart warming inside of her. Then, giggles erupted from behind the couch.

“I think we have spies,” Barbie whispered against her lips.

Dana and Suzanne, now sated with food and cartoons, jumped up from behind the couch. Barbie grabbed the youngest and pulled her into his lap, tickling her as she howled and giggled hysterically. Dana bounced around the couch and jumped up next to her mother, laying her head against her shoulder.

“Is Daddy still going away?”

The laughter subsided, and Suzanne looked up at her father from the safety of his lap. His eyes met Julia’s and he shook his head.

“No, Daddy’s not going anywhere.”

Suzanne screeched with joy and plopped down in between her parents, and Dana jumped off the couch to wrap her arms around her father. Julia watched them for a long moment, two little red-heads and their adoring dad pulling them both close. Barbie cradled Dana against him like he did the night she had been born.

She would still think about that day, often, seven years ago in the hospital when she had Dana. It hadn’t felt real until that moment when the nurse passed the silent, thoughtful newborn into her father’s arms. Julia had watched him reach down to touch her, Dana’s tiny hand rising from the bundle of blankets, her fingers wrapping around his. It was the first time Julia truly understood what they fought for.

It was the first time they saw their dream breathe.


End file.
